Would you pay for a service like Rust Belt Riders? Let us know in the comments.

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Potato peels and lemon rinds are trash for some, but treasure for others.

Rust Belt Riders operates on this principle, transporting food scraps from Detroit Shoreway homes and businesses to community gardens, where the refuse can be used for compost.

The twist: They do it on bicycles.

Founders Michael Robinson and Daniel Brown began brainstorming their food-scrap pickup service in the past year, and have since added three businesses, four homes and eight community gardens to their client list. Their first pickup was June 1.

"We didn't really anticipate a big business response," Brown said. "We thought we would be much more residential in nature of our funding, but the majority of our clients right now are businesses, so it was kind of a surprise."

The idea for Rust Belt Riders sprouted out of a community garden; Robinson moved to Cleveland last march to help Brown out with the Rust Belt Gardens, located at East 40th Street and St. Clair Avenue. The two met in Chicago, with Robinson attending Loyola and Brown enrolled at DePaul.

"We started doing some research, putting two and two together, and we figured out a lot of gardens would benefit from food scraps," said Brown. "It would make them less reliant on either personal financial contributions or grant dollars and if we could just help people reduce their household waste, everybody would benefit from that situation."

The Rust Belt Riders collected a ton of compost by June 16, less than a month after its launch, according to the service's Facebook page.

Using bikes with custom-made trailers, a rider goes to a home or businesses, empties food scraps into the bins contained in the trailers. A full load weighs anywhere from 200 to 250 pounds, Robinson said.

The rider then delivers the food scraps to a community garden where they are composted.

A pickup is set at a $5 flat rate. A weekly pickup subscription would total $20 a month, a bi-monthly pickup $10 and a monthly pickup set at $5. The food scraps are free to community gardens involved.

"For me, I really like the statement that it makes," Ryan DeBiase, manager of Edgewater Hill Victory Garden, said. "It's taking something out of the waste stream and turning it into a resource."

Edgewater Hill Victory Garden is one of Rust Belt Riders' drop-off points. DeBaise said that in addition to the food scraps, the business has been valuable in providing information about composting practices.

Crucial to the operation and expansion of Rust Belt Riders is the presence of enough community gardens to hold the scraps without over saturating any one area. The Detroit Shoreway neighborhood works because of the number of gardens, but also because of the mindset of residents.

"There's a strong desire among young professionals to live more sustainably," Brown said. "They don't necessarily know the ways in which to do that, but if you make it really easy by providing a service like this, it becomes very approachable."

He added that a lot of people in Detroit Shoreway, Tremont and Ohio City area are into the local food movement or are involved with community gardens.

Right now it's just Brown and Robinson on the payroll at Rust Belt Riders with some friends helping out when necessary. Hiring others will be a new adventure, since the business is worker-owned, worker operated.

"We're doing it in a way that the people that are shoveling food scraps, the people that are ... up to their knees in rotting fruit and vegetables will always be the ones that are making decisions about what's happening with the operation," Robinson said. "There will never be that separation."

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